This page is designed for accessibility. Content
is obtainable and functional to any browser or Internet device. This page's
full visual experience is available in a graphical browser that supports web
standards. Please consider
upgrading your web browser.

Quick Links

UMD Students Challenge Duluth Police
and
State Troopers on Data Disclosure

Last Spring, University of Minnesota Duluth journalism students in the
Research for Reporters class got real-world experience in respect to the
freedom of the press. Their assignment was to go to area police departments
and request arrest data from that week. This should have been an easy
task, as the information is required by law to be public. This assignment,
however, proved to be more difficult than predicted.

In September 2008, during Constitution Week, a panel discussion was held
on the Minnesota Data Practices Act and the first-hand research gathered
by the students. Instructor Chris Julin, the facilitator of the event,
was pleased with his spring assignment. “I thought it went great,”
he said. “I’m tickled at the student’s stick-to-it-iveness.
They acted very professionally.”

The panel consisted of two students from the Research for Reporters class,
Dave Buckner and Abel Gustafson, along with Julin. After an overview of
the law itself and an explanation of the class assignment by Julin, the
students recounted their experiences.

Both Gustafson and Buckner had been assigned to the State Troopers’
office located in Duluth. Although the law states exactly what information
must be available to the public at all times, the students were not allowed
to view the week’s arrest reports despite several visits to the
station. It was not until weeks later, after a formal “freedom of
information” request letter was sent to the station that the students
were granted possession of the requested information in exchange for a
$5 “processing fee”. "No one could have predicted how
the assignment was going to turn out," said Gustafson. Buckner agreed.
"It was supposed to be a one-time thing," he said. "It
ended up taking the entire semester."

Though most of the police stations visited were not as difficult to deal
with as the State Trooper's office, according to the panel, the Duluth
Police Department (DPD) was the only one who seemed prepared to abide
by the law to its full extent.

The issue is vital because if Data Practices Act was not enforced, a
police agency would have the ability to arrest and hold any citizen without
public knowledge. “This is important to journalists and everybody
else,” said Gustafson. “We live in America; they can’t
just haul somebody away without answering for it." Gustafson suggested
that all of the departments agreed with the spirit of the law. "I
don't believe the police were purposely withholding information,"
he said.

The overwhelming theme, according to the panel, seemed to be a lack of
experience on the part of the police officers. Apparently, many of the
departments are not approached on a regular basis for arrest data like
the DPD does, therefore they don't know how to handle the requests. Julin
pointed out that the departments were not flagrantly violating the law,
and they were not “bad guys”; there was just a lot of confusion
over the entire process. The Hermantown Police Department even thanked
Gustafson for bringing the law to their attention and promised to fix
the problem by making arrest data more available to the public.

“We educated students and some of the police employees,”
said Julin. “There was definitely a lot of good done in the community.”